Long Ago and Far Away

Beloved Mrs.B bought me a 'walkman-style' doohickey for Valentines day that lets you play your dusty old cassette tapes and turn them into MP3s that you can actually use. I'd spotted it myself and was going to float the idea come B'day time. But she beat me to it and here it is.

So the first thing I did was turn my two Dagmar Krause Brecht/Weill/Eisler tapes into stuff I can put onto my i-Pod.

But the second thing I've done is start to turn the dog-earred cardboard box of performance tapes into something more too.

Like it says in the title, long ago and far away, there were 4 odd chaps who liked to make very strange noises with a variety of instruments and junk. Don't let any of the others tell you they aren't odd. I'm actually the most normal... BWHAHAHAHAHA

We were called Certain Ants.

Anyway, I've made a start and I'm testing Soundcloud as a place to share them. This one,

 Ran at Inset C 

is a duo of myself and Dr John MacMillan. John is the very hairy chap behind me.

Not in the pictures are Chris Atton and Martin Hackett. It seems, examining these now outmoded artefacts, the cassettes not the 4 old farts, that all this took place about 20 years ago. I do believe that the UK based members have been gigging again recently. To quote an old postcard I made that invariably ended up as beer mats at gigs...

Certain Ants

Cacophonous electronic row transforms an improvised noise allowing new transcendent sounds. Creating each raucous twisted aria involves nasty atonality, novel twanged strings, complex electrical rigmarole, tiny activities involving nails, and numerous toggle switches. Cageian eccentricities reach, tottering, across improbable new abysses. Notional tunes shrink, cowering.  Ether reverberates. Twitterings assault. Impromptu notes avoid neatness. Total sound chews ears rendering them almost impossibly numb. Ant noise turns somersaults.